Thursday, September 6, 2007

K dinged 66 last night! There she is awash in all her "crazy gold flash" glory while Jess looks on.

So Jess is our main tank. She likes to tank and spank while K heals with zeal (rhyming, FTW!). Jess has a special relationship with K... you know that tank-healer bond that comes after running many instances together.

Jess and D were actually telling me the other night that since we've been running together for so long, the two of them can predict how I'll heal and where I'll be in relation to them. So when I'm getting hit and need to spam my emergency help me macro which yells "K is getting beat on! Help her!", they pretty much know where I'll be to come save my squishy ass.

So at first I was kind of surprised (am I that predictable? maybe I should change some things up next time to make it interesting...), but I guess this is what makes groups who have run together for a while more successful. Not only do we trust each other and not get crazy angry over mistakes or a wipe or two (because as D says, you're not having fun unless you're dying), we understand each other's playing styles and can predict what the others will do.

I think this kind of experience can make up for non-traditional class makeups. We've run a lot of instances with a warrior, druid, and 3 rogues. Yup, no ranged dps. D calls us the strike force. They like to get all in there and get their hands dirty.

Here's a final shot of Jess and K, planning their next tank and heal combo as their kitty mounts swing their tails in tandem...

Ok I'm better. Anyway it's a symbiotic relationship one might say. Without Jess making mobs and bosses hopping mad (which is hard because Jess is so cute) K is just a pile of kindling, but without K's green swirlies Jess is just a corpse in fashionable green plate armor. (Hey K you should do an entry on our obsession with fashion!)

The rogue-heavy 5-man makes for interesting instancing. Multiple saps, kicks, and cheap shots, and some good dps and no dependence on mana. Also rogues generate less threat which helps me quite a bit but does make it a little harder for them to off-tank and pull a mob off K if I can't get to her. However they usually drop them dead before that since they know that dead healer = dead tank = wipe.

And like K said we all get along great. Going into an instance is more about having the opportunity to play together in a challenging situation than it is about XP and drops. Greed for drops, need for guildies.

Yeah, druid flight form is the same as regular flight form that others get at 70 with a few differences. First, riding crops or carrot on a stick don't increase your speed in flight form so you'll still get beaten in races w/ other people on normal flying mounts. Second, there are some daily quests that are only available to level 70 folks and some of them (particularly the bombing ones in Skettis and Blade's Edge's Ogri'la area) can't be done from flight form. So if you want to do those dailies, you'll need to shell out the 500g or whatever it is to buy the non-epic flying skill and the 100g or so for your non-epic flying mount. But if you don't care about doing dailies (which is a shame, because you end up making a TON of money with them) or being slightly slower than other non-epic flying folks w/ their speed trinkets, flight form is great! And it really makes those last couple of levels from 68 to 70 a lot easier!

BTW, you can't get your epic flight form (which is as fast as an epic flying mount) until you've bought the epic riding skill AND done a long series of quests so unfortunately even if you skip buying a normal flying mount eventually you're still going to have to pony up the 5000g+ to get the epic riding skill if you want your epic flight form.

the bombing quests can be done in swift flight form (aka epic flight form). I know because I have earned a ton of gold that way. one nice thing is that you can't be dismounted from flight form, so the birds in skettis are annoying but not really a threat.